Horseradish
AVERAGE COST, 2d. per stick.
This root, scraped, is always served with hot roast beef, and is used for garnishing many kinds of boiled fish. Let the horseradish remain in cold water for an hour; wash it well, and with a sharp knife scrape it into very thin shreds, commencing from the thick end of the root. Arrange some of it lightly in a small glass dish, and the remainder use for garnishing the joint; it should be placed in tufts round the border of the dish, with 1 or 2 bunches on the meat.
SEASONABLE from October to June.
Horseradish Sauce (for Cold Meat, Fish, &c.), INGREDIENTS for 1 tureen. 1 stick of horseradish, 1 apple, a little vinegar, sugar, 1/4 pint of cream. AVERAGE COST, 8d.
Grate the horseradish, bake the apple and let it get cold, take away the skin and core, then mix the two together to a smooth paste with a very little vinegar or lemon-juice, and sugar to taste; lastly add the cream, and mix thoroughly.
This sauce is nice with cold fish, such as salmon or turbot. For meat it can be made more economically by adding another apple and omitting the cream.
SEASONABLE at any time.
HOT SPICE.
Two preparations in one entry: shredded raw horseradish as a garnish for roast beef, and a cream sauce for cold fish or meat. Both depend on how you handle the root in the first few minutes.
- Acid immediatelyHorseradish develops its heat when the cells are broken, then loses it fast to air and heat. Grate it directly into the vinegar or lemon juice, which fixes the pungency; grated root left standing turns flat and faintly bitter.
- A "stick" of horseradishNot a defined measure; roughly a length of root of a few inches, an inch or so thick, yielding a few tablespoons grated. Prepared horseradish from a jar can stand in at about the same volume, but drain it and skip the added vinegar.
- 1/4 pint of creamAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, a scant 2/3 US cup. Beeton means single cream poured in as a liquid, not whipped; for a thicker sauce that holds its shape on a plate, lightly whipped heavy cream works and is closer to what most people now expect.
- Baking the appleA cooking apple, whole and unpeeled, at 375F for 40-45 minutes until collapsed, then cooled completely before the skin and core come out. The baking is there for sweetness and body, and the sauce will thin and weep if the pulp goes in warm.
- The hour in cold waterSoaking loosens soil from the crown and makes an older, slightly limp root firm enough to shred cleanly. Fresh roots need only a scrub.
- Shredding versus gratingFor the garnish, work from the thick end with a sharp knife or a coarse grater to get long threads that hold together in tufts. For the sauce, grate fine on the smallest holes so no fibrous strands remain.
- VentilationGrating a fresh root releases volatile mustard oils far more sharply than an onion. Work near an open window or extractor and keep your face back from the bowl.
- Yield and seasonThe recipe fills one tureen, more than enough as an accompaniment for a small party. "October to June" is usually taken to reflect roots lifted after the first frosts and stored through winter; horseradish is now sold year-round, and autumn roots are often said to be the most pungent.
- The stray line"HOT SPICE." at the end is the heading of the next entry in the alphabetical sequence, not part of this recipe.
Horseradish (Armoracia rusticana) is a brassica, and its heat comes from the same family of mustard oils found in wasabi and mustard seed. It is generally traced to eastern and central Europe, where it was long used both medicinally and at table, and it took hold in England as a condiment for beef from the seventeenth century onward, by which time it grew half-wild in gardens and along hedgerows. The pairing with roast beef became so fixed that Beeton can state it as a rule rather than a suggestion, and the entry's structure tells you something about Victorian service: the root is not merely a flavouring but a piece of table decoration, arranged in tufts round the joint. The baked apple in the sauce is a thoroughly period touch, doing the work of sugar and thickener at once, and the note that another apple can replace the cream is characteristic of a book that gives an average cost for most of its dishes.